Former APNU Member of Parliament and PNC Reform Member, James Bond, has thrown his support behind a second term for President Irfaan Ali, as Guyana prepares to head to the polls later this year.
On Thursday during a visit to Bond’s home community of Melanie Dhamishana on the East Coast of Demerara, the President received the support of the opposition member.
“President Ali is one person who has always remembered me, since he was a Minister he has always remembered me and he has been a friend to me and I’ll be giving you a second term and I say that publicly sir”, Bond said during the community meeting.
Over the past few years, Bond has been spotted on the cocktail circuit hobnobbing with various members of the Ali administration and has been a regular guest at state banquets and other formal State House events hosted by the President.
Back in 2020, during the height of the standoff following the elections, Bond who was a party agent for the APNU+AFC, had declared his distrust for PPP General Secretary, now Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo.
Two years later following a meeting with Mr. Jagdeo, Bond declared on social media that when he returns to politics, he would be taking a few pages from the book of the same Vice President Jagdeo.
Bond’s endorsement of President Ali for a second term has not so far garnered any immediate response from the People’s National Congress.
Since the 2020 elections, he had stayed away from major party events, but remerged on the political platform during the 2024 PNC Reform Congress, where he praised the charge of party Leader Aubrey Norton and declared then on social media that “it is clear that the PNCR is vibrant and well positioned for 2025”. He has been a close ally of PNC Reform Executive and former party Chairman, Volda Lawrence, who is currently before the Courts along with others, facing election fraud charges in relation to the 2020 elections.
Bond, who is also an Attorney-at-law and businessman, faced fraud charges of his own in 2021 under the current Government over the alleged sale of lands that had been leased to him by the Government holding company, NICIL. He had declared his innocence of those charges and called them politically motivated.
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